H. Richard Niebuhr

Helmut Richard Niebuhr (1894 – 1962) was an American Christian ethicist best known for his books Christ and Culture (1951) and Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (1960). He taught for several decades at Yale Divinity School. A prominent ecumenical theologian, Niebuhr illuminated from many perspectives the disjunct between the oneness and absoluteness of God and the division and relativism in religion and culture. He promoted a theology of personal responsibility based on an existential faith in the transcendent God. As such, he was critical of both the conservative use of religious doctrine as a crutch and of liberal social activism as an adequate path to salvation. His crowning work on Christian ethics, The Responsible Self (1963) was published after his death, and never received the exposure it deserved because of the secularization and radicalization of Christian theology in the 1960s.

Life

H. Richard Niebuhr was raised in Missouri, the youngest of five children of Gustav and Lydia Niebuhr. Gustav, a minister in the Evangelical Synod of North America, had immigrated from Germany. The older brother of H. Richard, Reinhold became an equally prominent theologian at Union Theological Seminary in New York, and his sister Hulda was for many years a professor of Christian education at McCormick Theological Seminary in Chicago. Richard attended Elmhurst College and Eden Theological Seminary and was ordained a minister in the Evangelical Synod in 1916. (The Synod merged in 1934 with the Reformed Church in America; the subsequently formed Evangelical and Reformed Church united in 1957 with the Congregational Christian Churches to form the United Church of Christ.) He taught at Eden Theological Seminary from 1919 to 1922 and managed to earn a master's degree at Washington University in St. Louis during that time. In the summer of 1921, he studied at the University of Chicago where he was influenced by the social psychology and philosophy of George Herbert Mead.

In 1920, H. Richard Niebuhr married Florence Marie Mittendorf and the couple later had two children, one of whom, Richard Reinhold, later became a professor of theology at Harvard Divinity School.

As a native speaker of German with theological and philosophical training, H. Richard was sought by Yale to translate works of German writers. From 1922 to 1924 he studied full time at Yale Divinity School and earned his Ph.D. with a doctoral thesis on "Ernst Troeltsch's Philosophy of Religion." Troeltsch, a prominent German scholar, was the author of The Social Teaching of the Christian Churches and The Absoluteness of Christianity and the History of Religions, neither of which was yet accessible in English translation.

Although Niebuhr was invited to remain at Yale to teach, he returned to Elmhurst College to become its president. The college grew and was accredited under his tenure. In 1927, he returned to teaching at Eden Theological Seminary, where he published his first book, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929), in which he showed how the various Christian denominations in America were shaped by the various nations and cultures of Europe. He began to work toward reform that could overcome these differences and develop Christian unity. In 1930, he spent a sabbatical leave in Germany where he studied the "German Realists" Karl Barth and Paul Tillich and was forced to juxtapose continental thought and the prevailing social gospel idealism in the United States.

In 1931, Niebuhr finally accepted his standing invitation to teach theology at Yale, where he spent the rest of his career teaching and specializing in theology and Christian ethics, as he continued to address the issues raised by Troeltsch throughout is life. He translated and published Paul Tillich's The Religious Situation (1932). While an influential writer at Yale, Niebuhr remained primarily a teacher of church ministers helping them guide church members to reconcile their Christian faith with a largely secular culture.

Teachings

From liberalism to radical monotheism

As a youth, Niebuhr accepted the liberalism of the prevailing social gospel which had been made popular by Walter Rauschenbusch in his A Theology for the Social Gospel (1917). The social gospel was rooted in a concept called meliorism based on the ideas of human evolution and perfection. Niebuhr's Ph.D. dissertation at Yale in 1924 was on Troeltsch's historical relativism, which was also part of the liberal tradition. His first book, The Social Sources of Denominationalism (1929), influenced by his study of Troeltsch, showed how the various Christian denominations in America were conditioned to be shaped by the various national, cultural, and economic traits of the people from Europe. But, the book revealed an ambivalent attitude toward liberalism, as it was also trying to say that this diversity of denominations failed to preach the single unified truth of Christ's love.

Although he was deeply rooted in the liberal tradition, in the early 1930s Niebuhr started to rediscover radical monotheism from Jonathan Edwards, Søren Kierkegaard, and Karl Barth. In 1930, Niebuhr spent a sabbatical leave in Germany where he was exposed to Barth's Neo-orthodoxy. So, in his 1931 article on "Religious Realism in the Twentieth Century," Niebuhr explained about religious realism (also called Christian realism), by saying that although it shares the ethical interest of liberal theology, it also appreciates "the independent reality of the religious object," i.e., God, recognized by radical monotheism. Thus, according to him, this realism "has shifted the center of interest from the subject to the object, from man to God, from that which is purely immanent in religious experience to that which is also transcendent."

This growing shift in Niebuhr can be found in some way in a number of articles he published in the early 1930s such as "Faith, Works, and Social Salvation" (1932), "Nationalism, Socialism and Christianity" (1933), "Towards Emancipation of the Church" (1935), and "The Attack upon the Social Gospel" (1936). In them, he sought to expose the actions of Christians that were based on cultural norms rather than true religion. He wrote about how men of faith, going about their lives and raising their families centered on God, would eventually pass up burned out and tired social activists and radicals who had fallen by the wayside, depleted of spiritual resources. As the world situation deteriorated in the 1930s, he increasingly voiced concern that religious people were too influenced by "the world" and not adequately grounded in the Christian faith. In The Church Against the World (1935), coauthored with Wilhelm Pauck and Francis P. Miller, Niebuhr criticized the uncritical alliances of Christianity with capitalism, nationalism, and humanism. He advocated a withdrawal of the churches from such worldly alliances and a return to religious faithfulness.

His shift to radical monotheism became much clearer in his second book, The Kingdom of God in America (1937), where he critiqued the social gospel, by saying: "A God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross." He sought to explain the mission of Christianity as a movement of human redemption in history. He showed how the phrase "Kingdom of God" meant different things at different times in American history. In the eighteenth-century time of Jonathan Edwards, whom he called the "Father of American Theology," the Kingdom of God meant the "Sovereignty of God." In the nineteenth-century period of the Jesus-centered gospel (known as Christocentric liberalism), the Kingdom of God meant the "reign of Christ," and through the twentieth-century social gospel it came to mean the "kingdom on earth." These three elements are all aspects of God's Kingdom but had been emphasized differently in history. The social gospel emphasis on the "kingdom on earth" is incomplete and fragmentary; it needs to be augmented by a truly broad, faithful, and dynamic Christianity that rests neither on the traditions and doctrines that divided Christianity, nor on their rejection, which separated Christianity from God.

Combining Barth and Troeltsch

Given his continued interest in Troeltsch's relativism even after his rediscovery of radical monotheism, Niebuhr's new task was to mediate between Troeltsch's historical relativism and Barth's insistence on the primacy of revelation. So, in his The Meaning of Revelation (1941), he aimed at combining Troeltsch and Barth: "These two leaders [i.e., Troeltsch and Barth] in twentieth century religious thought are frequently set in diametrical opposition to each other; I have tried to combine their main interests, for it appears to me that the critical thought of the former and the constructive work of the latter belong together." His insight that the two "belong together" came because he thought that when historical relativism necessarily makes our views of God limited and conditioned, we are humbled enough to become self-critical, faithful, and communal for verification of truth, to be able to experience revelation in history.

Our views of God are limited because they are relative by being historically conditioned (Troeltsch's historical relativism) as well as by being subjective about God (Friedrich Schleiermacher's religious relativism) or by being too occupied with our own worth to be related to God (Albrecht Ritschl's religious relativism). But, being aware of the limitations of our knowledge of God does not have to lead us to skepticism and subjectivism. Rather, this awareness can lead us to begin with the faith of the historical Christian community where revelation occurs. We are then led to a "confessional" (rather than proclaimed) theology which, consisting in confession, recital, narrative, or story about God in history, is not dogmatic or confining but "liberationg" as an appropriate "approach to universality." Otherwise, problems such as idolatry, aggrandizement, self-defense, and self-justification will occur.

For Niebuhr, what he calls "inner history," i.e., history as lived, rather than "outer history," i.e., history as observed, is the locus of revelation as the self-disclosure of God. And this revelation in inner history makes everything else in history intelligible: "Revelation means for us that part of our inner history which illumines the rest of it and which is itself intelligible.

Christ and culture

Christ and Culture, perhaps Niebuhr's best known book, was published in 1951. In this book, he developed five typologies or psychological dispositions of Christians towards culture. One typology is the blind acceptance of culture — "Christ of culture," like a child accepting the world of the parents. Another is "Christ against culture," in which all things worldly are rejected. Then, there is the idea of "Christ above culture," where the church is above the world. Next is "Christ and culture in paradox," where we live in two separate worlds simultaneously. Finally, there is "Christ the transformer of culture," where believers actually change the culture for the better. Although Niebuhr lists these as five types of relationships without prioritizing which is superior (because different denominations or church leaders will identify with different types), it is clear that he has progressed through these in five stages of his own intellectual maturation, and that "Christ the transformer of culture" is the goal.

Other writings

In 1955, Niebuhr published, together with Waldo Beach, a major textbook/reader, Christian Ethics, in which they present the ethical teachings of church leaders from the early church to the present. He concludes with ideas about being a faithful and ethical Christian in the modern world of unbalanced economic power, advanced military technology, and power politics. He followed this with a small handbook for ministers titled The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (1956), in which he provides advice on how to faithfully address the tensions and paradoxes of the modern world.

Niebuhr was concerned with historical relativism. While God may be absolute and transcendent, human beings are not. Humans are a part of the flux and movement of the world. Because of this, the ways in which God is apprehended are never permanent. God is always understood differently by people at different times in history and in different social locations. Niebuhr's theology is ecumenical and shows great sensitivity to the ways in which expressions of faith differ from one religious community to another. However, he continually cautioned against allowing any cultural expression to become God or a lesser god. He developed this theme from many perspectives in Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (1960). In particular he warned against henotheism. Human beings have a tendency to limit the extent of their community to a family, tribe, or nation, closing off the rest of the world at some point. Nationalism was a good example in World War II, where Christians believed in God as creator of all, but promoted nationalisms that, in practice, made lesser gods of the nation-states.

Legacy

By the end of his career, H. Richard Niebuhr was recognized by his peers for a theological acumen that allowed him to meaningfully address the most pressing ethical issues of the day while maintaining faithfulness to God. He had helped prepare many students for a successful ministry in an age in which many religions struggled.

In 1960, Niebuhr was honored to give the Robertson lectures at the University of Glasgow, and he repeated them at Cambridge University and the University of Bonn. These lectures formed the outline of a planned comprehensive and systematic exposition of ethics that he never completed. As he was preparing to retire in 1963, he died suddenly on July 5, 1962. However, we have a glimpse of what he wanted to write in his systematic ethics, thanks to the work of his son Richard and his colleague James Gustafson who assembled and published pieces that had been written in The Responsible Self (1963).

H. Richard Niebuhr and ecumenical Christianity were both at their zenith in 1960. The radical social movements of the 1960s and the churches' preoccupation with the Vietnam War obscured and undermined many of the advances Christian theology had made. Within two decades, the National Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches lost their leadership and support due to radical social activism similar to what Niebuhr had witnessed and attempted to reform from the 1930s onward. In the end, hedonism, secularism, and an attack on the personal responsibility Niebuhr championed scored at least a momentary victory. The "Responsible Self" was mocked as the "Impossible Self," and seminarians opted for the fashionable theologies of secularism, play, and liberation that called traditional Christian virtue unnecessary, old-fashioned, and oppressive. As the twenty-first century dawns in a world of moral relativism, confusion, corruption, and war, perhaps Niebuhr will be rediscovered.

Works

• The Social Sources of Denominationalism. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 1929; Kessinger Publishing, 2004. ISBN 076619342X
• "Religious Realism in the Twentieth Century." In Religious Realism, edited by D.C. Macintosh, 413-31. New York: Macmillan Company, 1931.
• The Church Against the World. Chicago, Willett, Clark & Company, 1935.
• The Kingdom of God in America. Chicago: Willett, Clark & Company, 1937; Wesleyan University Press, 1988. ISBN 081956222X
• The Meaning of Revelation. New York: Macmillan Company, 1941; Westminster John Knox Press, 2006. ISBN 0664229980
• Christ and Culture (1951) ISBN 0060904313
• Christian Ethics (1955)
• The Purpose of the Church and Its Ministry (1956) ISBN 0060661747
• Radical Monotheism and Western Culture (1960)
• The Responsible Self (1962) ISBN 0060662115
• Faith on Earth: An Inquiry into the Structure of Human Faith (1989)

Reference

• Kliever, Lonnie. H. Richard Niebuhr. Waco, TX: Word Books, 1977. ISBN 0849900786

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